What does it mean to take something apart, to put it back together, and to share what you learned in the process? I am interested in systems as broad as politics, history, our built environment, and our learning systems. The act of exploring, deconstructing, and decoding these systems is political, if subtly. We all have power; we all own this world.

I make projects using a variety of forms — installations, publications, videos, and events — that encourage audiences to become participants in research and production as a way to explore their own experiences, their histories, their challenges. My work is responsive to environments, develops over time, and is co-created with participants as well as collaborators. Together, we can begin to realize that the construction of systems is made up of collective energy, and we might begin to ask: whose energy?

Katie Hargrave (b. 1985 Chicago, resides Chattanooga, TN) is a professor at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. She received her MFA in Intermedia from the University of Iowa, MA from Brandeis University, and BFA from the University of Illinois. Her work has been shown at DIY spaces, university galleries, non-profits, and festivals. She is a member of the collaborative groups “The Think Tank that has yet to be named” and “Like Riding a Bicycle.”

13 (stars forming) constellations (the sun moves through)

It's Nothing Personal

US DOI: Black BLM Lives Matter

Liberty or Death: I Improve

Small Animals Make First Paths

Campsite Rule

Listen to Wolf

Don't Tread on Me (Flags for Plants)

These Colors Don't Run

New Homestead Act

History Repeats Itself

Five Readers On The Road

Where there were Many

In Poor Tastes Good

Like Riding a Bicycle

Big Sky Visor

Go East Young Man

Structures of Support

How to Unmake an American Quilt

My Ronald Reagan Collection

For and in consideration of the great love I bear: does a tree have standing?